


A Faint Wisp of Light

by luvsanime02



Series: Delete Winter [9]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Language, Rape/Non-con Elements, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikasa finds out about Eren, and doesn't know what to do. Someone unexpected helps her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Faint Wisp of Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



**Disclaimer:** I don’t own Shingeki no Kyojin. That honor belongs to Isayama-sensei. I’m making no profit off of this fic.

########

 **A Faint Wisp of Light** by luvsanime02

########

Mikasa doesn’t sleep much anymore.

How can she, when Eren lies beside her moaning and thrashing, sometimes kicking or punching the bed in anger? He yells incoherently in his sleep while tears run down his face. She doesn’t know how to make him stop sweating in terror every night.

Mikasa wonders if it’s because of that woman they were forced to watch be murdered last week. She wants to know if it was Eren that had spoken to her, if he was trying to get them out and had almost managed it. Mikasa remembers how pale his face had been when the woman was dragged into the room, already beaten and bloody, and wants to know if he’d smiled at her, laughed with her, knew her name.

She doesn’t ask. Mikasa spends most of her nights getting towels to soak up the moisture pouring from Eren’s body. She hugs him close when he starts to shake and runs her fingers through his hair. It doesn’t help, but she doesn’t know what else to do. It’s not like they have anyone she can talk to. There’s no one here she trusts except Eren.

########

One early morning, Mikasa wakes up tired, as usual. Immediately, though, she knows that something is wrong. Eren is not in bed with her, which is alarming enough, but then she realizes that he’s not in their room at all. Her heart thuds and she’s frozen in place again, just like all those years ago. She’s scared and she can’t move. Something is happening, right now, and it involves Eren.

Still Mikasa sits there, unmoving, until she hears the screams.

Then she is leaping up out of her bed and racing down the hall to the stairs. She runs up them, trips and practically crawls up the last few steps, and then runs down the hallway and into the large room at the end.

Somehow, Mikasa already knows what she’s going to find, but it’s still a shock to see the chaos in front of her eyes.

Eren is on top of the woman who took them in. They’re both naked, and some part of her hurts at that, but the rest of her is too busy processing all the damage. There are books and clothes everywhere. The bed is cockeyed and the curtains have been torn down. It looks like a demon has ravaged the room and everything in it.

Then Mikasa forces herself to look closely at the two occupants on the bed. Eren is straddling the woman, and he’s choking her. Her lips are turning blue and her eyes are rolling, and her fingernails have left scratches down Eren’s face and all over his arms. Mikasa is almost afraid to approach. Almost.

Instead, she walks calmly up to the still-struggling pair and completely ignores the woman. She can guess some of what’s happened - why didn’t Eren tell her? - but that’s not important right now. Slowly, she reaches over and cups the side of Eren’s face. “You’re crying,” she tells him.

He doesn’t move or blink, except to tighten his grip on the woman’s throat. She’s gasping for air.

Mikasa strokes her hand over Eren’s cheek, and then down to his shoulder and presses a firm hand there. “Eren?” she calls. His eyes are empty. She wonders if he’s even conscious.

Just as Mikasa is considering prying his hands back forcefully, a voice behind her says, “Don’t.”

She turns to see a man standing in the doorway. He has a gun in one hand and is staring calmly at the scene in front of him. She’s about to ask him what he means when a distant memory surfaces in her mind. She knows that face. “Uncle Levi?” she asks, stunned.

The man squints at her, blinks, and then rubs a hand over his face and mutters, “Shit.” He seems to sway slightly before he looks at her harder, nods his head, and puts the gun away in a holster at the small of his back.

Mikasa wants to ask him a hundred questions. What is he doing here? How did he find her? But she doesn’t have the time. She turns around again to focus on Eren. “Why not?” she asks her uncle, referring to what he said earlier.

“He’s having a night terror,” Uncle Levi replies simply, automatically catching her meaning. “People torn from them by force can react violently and lash out.”

She nods. This makes sense. “How do we get him to let go of her then?”

Uncle Levi pauses, and then looks at her evenly. “Do you want him to?”

Mikasa pauses at his question? Does she? It has to be as obvious to her uncle as it is to her what was going on in this room before they arrived, and probably has been for a long time. Why didn’t Eren _tell_ her? Even as she asks, Mikasa already knows the answer.

Faintly, she shakes her head. “I don’t want Eren to murder someone when he’s not even aware of what he’s doing,” she decides. “He doesn’t want to execute her right now.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Uncle Levi agrees, raising an eyebrow at her choice of words. Mikasa realizes that he too can see the tears on Eren’s face just as well as she can, and knows what they mean, but he still let her come to a decision on her own. She thinks that maybe he wouldn’t have stepped in even if she’d said no.

Her uncle walks over to the light switch and starts flicking the light off, then on, and then off again. Slowly at first, and then more rapid. Mikasa watches as best as she’s able to, fascinated.

The light is off when Eren wakes up, but she stills reaches out to him when she hears his confusion. “It’s okay,” she soothes.

“…Mikasa?” Eren asks. His voice is scratchy and hoarse, from sleeping or yelling, Mikasa doesn’t know.

“It’s fine,” she murmurs, sitting down beside him on the bed when the lights turn back on and stay that way. “You need to let go of her,” she adds, gesturing to the woman Eren’s fingers are still suffocating.

Eren looks down, finally notices what he’s doing, and jerks off of the woman like her touch burns his skin. “I- What am I-?”

“You were asleep,” she tells him firmly, slowly pulling him over until his head is resting in her lap. “It was just a bad dream.” She starts stroking her hand through his hair now.

There’s a few second of silence before Eren starts crying in earnest, shaking both of them with his sobs. “I’m sorry!” he chokes out. “I’m so sorry!”

“Hush,” she commands, and his words obediently trail off into silence. “She’s fine.” Mikasa doesn’t actually know if this is true or not, but she doesn’t particularly care. The woman’s breathing shallowly, but she’s still unconscious. Good.

“No,” Eren mutters, fighting down his sobs long enough to clarify. “No, not her, I could have hurt you! I didn’t know what I was doing and I could have hurt you, Mikasa!”

She smiles, although Eren’s face is pressed against her stomach and he can’t see her. “Don’t be silly, Eren,” she scolds lightly. “I’m your sister. You’d never hurt me.”

She rocks him back and forth gently, letting him finish crying. Her uncle is silent behind them, a presence she can ignore until Eren is stable again.

Finally, after a long time during which his cries eventually end, Eren says, “We have to get out of here. We have to leave now, and I don’t know where to _go._ ”

“It’s okay,” she says again, hugging him even closer to her. She turns her head to the side and looks her uncle in the eyes. “I do.”

Uncle Levi gives her a flat look, then sighs and looks around with disgust at the mess of a room they’re all in. “Shit,” he says once more, knowing that she’s right.


End file.
